5 Times Sherlock Learned
by TouchedBytheAngel
Summary: An incredibly short little group of ficlets I wrote in a political meeting, in which I got insanely bored very fast. :P Enjoy. I am not to blame for any references towards political party.
1. Chapter 1

**Five Times Sherlock Learned**

Paradox

Sherlock didn't mean to be stupid. He didn't mean to make mistakes, or disappoint his parents, or make his brother angry. But somehow, he did all three of those things and more.

He wanted to be clever. He wanted to be smart and observant and make his only sibling smile.

But no matter what he did, Mycroft was always better.

1

He could remember one time when there had been an offer to speak publicly, promoting a company. They had both volunteered, but Mycroft had been chosen. And he had been splendid-the whole company was bought out. Sherlock stood in the audience and plastered on a smile, avoiding his parents' gaze. Mycroft had received no less than three more invitations in the next week, one of them adding as a side note that he might "bring his little brother along sometime." Sherlock had ground his teeth and held his silence as his sibling laughed and chatted with his parents, discussing job opportunities.

He grew very good with telling what people were thinking. He could tell what people had been doing and where they'd been from constant watching and never speaking. His brother could talk, but Sherlock could hide. He had usually won at hide-and-seek as a child. He chose ordinary looking people and turned them into projects, experiments, watching what they ate and drank and said and thought. The old lady at the curb had a dying dog and a fetish for lemonade. The woman in the young couple walking down the dirt road was pregnant and wondering how they would provide for their child.

Mycroft got a job with as a paralegal, Sherlock noting with a smirk a job that was usually assigned to a woman as being more sedentary. His brother, however, seemed satisfied with the situation and scowled darkly when Sherlock laughed,

"You're going to get even fatter now, Myke."

"_Mycroft _is the name I was given by my parents," he said coldly. "If you could possibly struggle to the end. And you struggle with enough already," he added, enjoying the wince on Sherlock's face.

"I was only joking, Mycroft," he whispered.

"Well I wasn't," His brother said loud enough for their parents to hear. "And while I can control my weight, you cannot control your Autism."

Sherlock ran from the room so that Mycroft would not see his tears.


	2. Chapter 2

2

Sherlock learned to hold back his emotions after that. They hurt him, people ignored them anyway, and they got in the way of his thinking. He slowly sifted them out and put them into boxes, shoving them into a little brain-attic and left them to collect dust.

He was showing an aptitude for science, especially chemistry. He hoped to major in it when he was older; in five years he would go to college and in the farthest reaches of his mind there was the tiniest shred of _hope. _That maybe someday he'd be as good as Mycroft. Maybe even better. He would be great, and make his parents proud, just like his brother.

He had an experiment prepared, ready to show his parents. Osmosis performed on an egg superheated then dropped into ice-cold water; the shell of the egg would melt much quicker than the typical three days it normally took. It went beautifully…until he poured icy water into an incredibly hot glass jar, which then shattered and doused his foot with shards and liquid. The egg splattered onto the floor, staining his mother's impeccably scrubbed grout.

The kitchen was dead silent for at least a few good seconds. When Sherlock stood up, his brother looked shocked, his father disappointed, and he was too scared to glance at his mother for a moment.

"William-Sherlock-Scott-Holmes!" She finally gasped out.

Sherlock ducked his head. "I'm sorry," he whispered, running out again. His mother was left, looking at Mycroft in confusion.

"Did I say something?" She enquired.

Her son shrugged. "Well, despite the fact that you used his full name, which has the general tendency to inspire fear…"

His mother looked mournful. "I am sorry...I didn't realize…"

"I was only going to ask him if he was alright."


	3. Chapter 3

3

When Sherlock was thirteen, his brother was accepted on a full scholarship to the University of Oxford. He listened in silence as his family conversed about it, laughing and chattering.

"Sherlock, why aren't you eating your rutabagas?" His mother inquired when a rare pause occurred.

"I'm just not very hungry," he mumbled, for some reason ever unable to formulate a cool response when she spoke like that. (She probably knew it.)

His father sighed. "Well, they'll make you strong. I don't know all the maths for it but your mother does and will also tell you that you _need _to eat them."

Sherlock glanced up. "Rutabagas have been known to carry strong cases of E. Coli," he pointed out.

"But the enzymes in the juices of the plant are also known to be strong enough to break through that chemical bond," Mycroft retorted. "Or did you not think it through?"

Sherlock flushed and bent back down to his plate. "You are the _worst _big brother _ever," _he muttered.

Mycroft shook his head and continued eating while Sherlock forced down the vegetables in silence.

"When will you be leaving us?" Sherlock's mother inquired of his older brother.

"Next month," Mycroft confirmed. "They have to adjust a few of the courses for my advanced placement."

"Ah," his father nodded. "And what do you intend to be taking?"

"Government and budgets," Mycroft answered, smiling slightly. "One day, I want to be practically running it."

Mycroft's mother laughed and patted his arm. "I can see it now."

"What about you, Sherlock?" His father suddenly inquired, swallowing a bite of corned-beef.

"Whatever is cleverest," he shrugged. "Something that would teach me what I can't learn all by myself."

Mycroft laughed. "You do realise that's entirely subjective, don't you, Sherlock?"

"Well then maybe I won't go to the University," Sherlock said stubbornly. "I'll help police…show them how to catch murderers and serial killers and moles."

"What about the other things?" Sherlock's father wondered. "Like robberies and house thieves and missing cats?"

Sherlock waved it off. "Only if they're _very _interesting. There's too many for me to help them with _all _of them."

Mycroft smiled behind his glass of after-dinner brandy. "You seem marvelously ambitious this evening, little brother."

Sherlock scowled. "I have a _name._"

"One which I am quite well familiar with," Mycroft responded smoothly.

Sherlock just grunted and finished his milk. He had an odd preference for it and used it frequently with both his meals and his experiments.

"May I be excused?" He inquired a few moments later in the minute of pleasurable silence before someone started up a long discussion again.

"Why? Don't you want soufflé?" His mother inquired.

Sherlock wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "I have had a sufficiency, thank you."

He got up from the table and pushed his chair back in, then went quietly to his room, leaving his family to discuss his brother's future successes.


	4. Chapter 4

4

One thing Sherlock also learned was that there were people who thought that he had succeeded already. A few weeks after his thirty-sixth birthday he was introduced to a possible flat-mate, a former Captain in the army. John Watson is different; frankly paradoxical. He's kind and harsh and soft and hard, and he'll shoot a man in cold blood for him but he spends his days healing the sick. Sherlock is amazed, he is confused, and he is intrigued by it.

The day he faces Moriarty and jumps off a building, he learns that he has broken John Watson. He watches from a distance as he stands by his fake grave, and John says words he never expected to hear. Sherlock's eyes are rimmed red, but John will never know that, or that he is their cause. Molly watches him sadly as he adjusts his coat before slipping away.

"You love him, don't you?" She asks simply.

Sherlock doesn't answer, but his silence does.

"Are you ever coming back? He's crushed, Sherlock," Molly says in that stuttering, yet authoritative way she has.

"If it's safe for me to," he shrugs.

"When is "safe"?" She inquires.

"Whenever I can come back and John Watson isn't going to end up with a sniper rifle pointing at his head," Sherlock answers shortly.

_Or Lestrade. Or Mrs. Hudson. _

But John is the name that comes out.

Sherlock marches away to board Mycroft's private jet, that will take him to all sorts of places, all of them dangerous, all of them cold. None of the inhabitants will make tea like John will, or kill for him, or get angry at him for experimenting on his favourite jumper.

Siberians probably don't even _wear _jumpers, his subconscious rebukes him as the plane takes off.

The thought alone of never tasting John's tea again is enough to make him want to ask the aircraft to be turned around.


End file.
